Egypt's High State Security Prosecution appealed Thursday a criminal court decision to release controversial preacher Mahmoud Shaaban and 10 other defendants being investigated in what is known as the “Salafist Front” case.

Spokesperson to the Higher Elections Committee (HEC) Omar Marawan has said the law stipulates that all niqab-wearing women will only cast ballots if they remove the face veil while voting, for identity verification purposes. Otherwise they will be barred.

The Supreme Electoral Commission (SEC) will ban women from wearing the ‘Niqab’ (face covering) while casting their ballots, state-run media Al-Ahram reported on Thursday.

Cairo Governor Galal Saeed inspected the site of a blast near Ramses in Cairo Thursday morning and ordered a thorough search of neighboring schools for any explosives before students start their school day, reported the state news agency MENA.

Several Iraqi Kurdish troops tested positive for mustard gas after battles this summer with the Islamic State group in northern Iraq, a spokesman for the paramilitary group said Wednesday.

Egypt’s Pope Tawadros II headed to the United States on Wednesday for a three week visit to the two oldest dioceses in Los Angeles and the southern U.S., Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.

Islamic State in Yemen on Tuesday claimed coordinated suicide bombings targeting the Yemeni government and the Arab military coalition in the southern city of Aden that killed 15 Arab and Yemeni troops.

Seventy-seven niqab-wearing faculty members from across Cairo University are preparing to file a law suit against the university president, a lawyer involved in the case told Aswat Masriya.

The Muslim Council of Elders, chaired by Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, is meeting on Thursday in Amman, Jordan to discuss the repeated Israeli aggressions on al-Aqsa Mosque, among other Islamic issues.

A leading Syrian rebel commander said on Wednesday it was illogical to suggest the Free Syrian Army (FSA) could join forces with Damascus to fight Islamic State, after the Russian president said his French counterpart had tabled the idea.

Pope Tawadros II, the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, said Sunday Copts who join the lists of the Salafist Al-Nour Party for the next parliamentary elections should not be trusted either by Muslims or Christians.

Egypt’s House of Zakat received a 16 million EGP ($2.04 million) grant from Bahrain to establish two Azhraian institutions and two dispensaries, according to the Secretary-General of the House of Zakat Nasser Fouad, Youm7 reported Tuesday.

Suspected militants from Nigeria’s Boko Haram group killed 11 soldiers in an attack over the border in Chad early on Tuesday, a Chadian military source said.

“It will take the Muslim Brotherhood roughly a decade to decide upon political and more general stances. Meanwhile militant Islamism, no longer confined to Jamaat Islami like in the 1980s and 1990s, will continue, perpetuating the idea that all ideological movements have a radical version,” says political scientist and commentator Wahid Abdel-Meguid.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks on the Yemeni government in Aden as well as Gulf Arab troops on Tuesday, it said in a statement released on twitter.

Islamic State militants have blown up the Arch of Triumph, a major monument in the 2,000-year-old Roman city of Palmyra, Syria's antiquities chief said on Sunday, after they destroyed two ancient temples at the central Syrian site in recent months.

The Salafi Call has demanded that Culture Minister Helmy al-Namnam apologize for calling Egypt “instinctively secular”, adding that the choice of Namnam as culture minister has aroused concerns among Egyptians

Coptic Christians have had a historical role in the Egyptian Parliament since it was first formed by Khedive Ismail. There were periods where they ascended the political ladder and left their mark on the history of modern Egypt, and other periods where they were not present in the political arena.

A police agent was killed and another colleague was wounded early Monday when unknown attackers shot them at a checkpoint in Beni Ebeid, Daqahlia.

Pope Francis said Monday that the Church was "not a museum" but a place for progress, as members of a key synod on the family rolled up their sleeves for the first day of what promises to be a spicy debate.

The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II is travelling to the United States at the end of this week, Father Pals Halim, a spokesperson for the church, said on Sunday.